New GSoW Forum - Species - Tyson - Krauss - Scott - Cochrane

The GSoW team is now officially moving from the cramped quarters of Facebook to a spacious custom designed forum.  This will really open up our teams to be able to train, mentor and move from language to language.  Expect to see a lot more from us as we work smarter.

The move of all the editors, files and creating help documents/videos have been keeping my "Away Team" busy for months. They wore their red shirts but we didn't lose a single person.  I want to give special thanks to several people who made this happen.  Our resident vampire, Nathan Miller, Chris Peterson, Bill Grieb, Leon Korteweg, Fred Green, Lei Pinter, Nix "Mini-me" Dorf, Ryan Harding, Zooterkin and Svetlana Bavykina.  But extra special thanks go to Walkiria "Paddling" Nubes and Julie Tominson for their relentless attention to the project.  

Dutch editor Emile Dingemans suggested we start a GSoW fan page on Facebook, and so we have.  It will work a bit like this blog, where you can follow and comment.  Here is the link to the Facebook Fan Page for GSoW, at the moment it appears to be full of photos of guerrillas, just our way of celebrating I guess. Of course the blog you are reading now is superior, as you can search for posts on specific topics of interest. Plus you will find a comment or three from Mabus the Internet troll for your reading pleasure.  I also know that there is at least one comment from the Amazing Randi himself on a post about his dear friend, Jerry Andrus.

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Not everyone has been working on creating the forum, some remained editing Wikipedia as you will see. I should point out that GSoW is constantly editing on WP, small changes make a lot of difference, but to highlight all those changes would be too much to relate here.  I'm only highlighting the more glamorous changes with these our latest updates!  If you have questions or would like to join our team, please write to us at GSoWteam@gmail.com.

Nathan Miller updated the Wikipedia page for the film Species, and I'm sure you are asking yourself, how is that related to scientific skepticism?  Nathan wrote the Wikipedia page for Ben Radford's book "Tracking the Chupacabra", which explains how Radford believes the legend of the Chupacabra started.  Sorry to give away the conclusion but even knowing this, you will still find it a great read.  Just learning how poultry can appear to have all their blood drawn out of their bodies was worth the price of the book.   
Before and After   
The Dutch team seemed to develop a burst of energy this month. The Portuguese team better watch out, they might just loose the title of the most prolific non-English editors.

First up is Gok van Pascal, which in English is known as Pascal's Wager.  Leon Korteweg translated this using Dawkin's "The God Delusion".

Wim Vanderberghe translated the English page for Scotsman Archie Cochrane for Dutch readers.  Very interesting man and I'm glad Wim brought him to my attention, I'm sure you will agree.

Leon also translated the Neil deGrasse Tyson page into Dutch.  We are trying to get ready for the release of Cosmos in 2014 by getting all of the Wikipedia pages that are associated with the series, ready and waiting for the thousands of visitors that will be arriving..  We are making progress, English, Portuguese, German, and now Dutch are finished.

Leon decided that because Lawrence Krauss will be appearing with Richard Dawkins in The Unbelievers his WP page needed some work.  Consequentially Krauss will also be speaking in Amsterdam in October 2014 so even more important that the Dutch page be in great shape.  Look at the difference.   Here is the before link.  And now the after.

The Spanish team is slowing down this month, but still Nix Dorf managed to get another page translated. This time it was for Eugenie Scott, who just announced her retirement from the NCSE by the end of 2013.

That's all the updates I have for the moment.  There are a few that are only a couple days away from finishing, they will just have to wait as we want them completely done before launching them.

      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In case you have missed GSoW in the news, here are a few links to our more noteworthy shout-outs and interviews.

Two from Scot Bestows's blog Do You Think? This one features a conspiracy theory about the upcoming CFI Summit. Which BTW I've been asked to lecture at, so please try to make it.  His first blog on GSoW was one mainly about me being a Rational Hero for that week.

As usual every episode of Skepticality since January 2013 has had a podlet featuring GSoW.  And most of the Skeptical Connections podcasts have allowed me to record a segment, mostly I talk about how to get the skeptical message beyond the choir but please give them a listen, lots of great content from other people are in these episodes.

This was a blog by Robert Blaskiewicz which talked about what is being done RIGHT in the skeptical movement today and we were on that list.  Really cool.  Skeptical Humanities Blog

From a column I wrote for CFI about some of the pages we have written that concerns the history of scientific skepticism.

Ed Clint writing for the Richard Dawkins blog talks about how to get involved in skeptical activism.  Half the blog is given up to discussing GSoW, and the other half to another project I am active in, the Independent Investigative Group (IIG).

CFI asked me to lecture at their leadership conference this summer in New York.  Here are the videos of that lecture.

Janis Callister gave me a long interview allowing me to explain the GSoW project for the Just Skeptic's podcast.

The French language podcast Scepticisme Scientifique interviewed one of my French team members Christophe Michel about the GSoW project.

Sharon Hill's Doubtful News blog highlighted my JREF award from TAM 2013.

Our very own Chris Pederson was interviewed for Freethought Blog about her involvement with GSoW.

I was listed as one of the inspiring women at TAM 2013 on Ed Clint's blog.

Skeptoid Blog mentions the guest lecture given by Shane Greenup and GSoW Swedish team leader Philip Skogsberg at the European Skeptic Congress, held in Stockholm Sweden this August.  I was supported to be the one giving the lecture, but my oncologist would not allow me to travel from California to Sweden during this time.

Recorded at TAM 2013, I was a guest host for Virtual Skeptics podcast.

                    -------------------------------------------------------------

Upcoming events...

Wednesday October 9th, 2013 I will be lecturing for the Bay Area Skeptics in Berkeley, CA.  Here is more information.

October 24-27, 2013 find me at the CFISummit in Tacoma, WA.  Here is the website.

Saturday, Jan 18th, 2014 I will be lecturing for the Santa Barbara, CA Humanist Society.  (more info to follow)

July Updates - Scott - Gorski - Tyson - Radford and MORE

WoW July is only halfway done and we have so much to talk about.  Lots going on with the GSoW team.  So in no special order lets get started.

The beauty of having a world team like GSoW  is that we can't all be in the same place at the same time.  While many of my team were at the Amaz!ng Meeting - TAM 2013, others were busily at work editing.  Nix Dorf released the Eugenie Scott page in Portuguese.

Neil deGrasse Tyson just received two rewrites, one in Portuguese by Luis Pratas, here is the Portuguese before,  the other, by new editor Michael Steinkeller in German.  By the way Michael joined after watching the JREF workshop video.  If you haven't seen it yet, it is located here.  One more thing, Michael almost didn't join because he has two small children, but somehow he is managing to find a few minutes to work on this project, remember folks you set your own pace at GSoW.

Here was a major event.  You would think that David Gorski already would have a Wikipedia page wouldn't you?  Well someone attempted to create one, but left it in such embarrassing condition we had to jump in and do it right.  This is what we found.  Okay hold your breath and now look at what we created. Introducing the new and improved David Gorski Wikipedia page! Not sure why I always say "Strong enough to stand an elephant on it" but that phrase keeps coming to mind when I think of this page rewrite. Thankfully we released the page rewrite in time for TAM, Gorski's page views tripled during that weekend.

Sometimes it is the little things that give me that kapow feeling.  We managed to get Gorski mentioned on the Steve Jobs page.  Its kinda lost in the mass that is Jobs page, but still with the hit count it receives, it can't hurt. Searching for "Gorski" on the page, I learned that according to Gorski, the 9 month delay with the cancer treatment may not have killed Jobs, interesting.  Another thing I just learned is that even now in June 2013, Jobs is ranked number 70 in top Wikipedia views.

Ben Radford's book Tracking the Chupacabra was front page of Wikipedia as a DYK.  Follows of the GSoW project know what that means, a ton of views for the 8 hour window it is up. Well the results are in, here are the view stats.  The ripple effect caused the page for Chupacabra to also receive a spike. And the movie Species as well.

Bill Grieb rewrote the WP page for Ronald Bailey (before) (after)

Another rewrite for Bill Grieb was this one for the Merseyside Skeptics, what a difference (before) (after)

Fresh new photos I took at TAM have been added to these pages... Daniel Loxton, Harriet Hall, Derek Colanduno, Mark Edward, Donald Prothero and Massimo Polidoro.  This isn't difficult to do, if you have a photo that you think would improve a WP page, please contact me and I'll walk you thought the process.

A GSoW team member reminded me that we are responsible for a lot of quick edits on Wikipedia that are pretty cool.  We do a lot more than just page rewrites.

Braco the gazer got a lot of attention from editors trying to get the first sentence of the article just right.  You would be surprised at how much time we can spend on a single word when dealing with believers and other WP editors.  

Here's a fun one,  my son mentioned that Jenny McCarthy was going to be on The View, which led me to getting all ranty on Facebook skeptics needing to do something.  People quickly began posting links to noteworthy articles about this announcement.  I in turn threw the links over to my GSoW team and Nathan Miller quickly responded by successfully adding a couple of the links.  Since then other WP editors (not on my team) have added a whole section under the criticism section.  You will notice that not only is Bill Nye mentioned, but so is Derek Bartholomaus's Body Count website.  And just in time, Jenny isn't as popular as Steve Jobs, but she is sure rolling in the views this last week.

TAM 2013 was awesome.  I'm still not completely recovered.  Here are a few videos I created while there.  This first one is a 3-parter on Crowd-Sourced Activism.  I spoke with Shane Greenup (Rbutr) and Tim Farley (What's the Harm?) and had a major blast.

Susan in the Superwoman pose at the Crowd-Sourcing Workshop

Later in the afternoon I participated in the Preserving Skeptic History workshop with some of my favorite people, Daniel Loxton, Ray Hyman, Tim Farley and Robert Sheaffer. Special guest appearance by Susan Blackmore.

Here is a series of shots I took of people whose pages we created or rewrote along with the WP page. Just for fun.

Tim Farley

Robert Sheaffer

Leo Igwe

Sean Faircloth

Richard Saunders

Sara Mayhew

 

Recording a Skepticality episode

Recording a Virtual Skeptics episode

 The surprise of all surprises was the wonderful comments from James Randi and DJ Grothe when they presented me with the JREF award for Skepticism in the Public Interest,  It reads "With gratitude for your steadfast advocacy for skepticism on the World Wide Web and at the grass roots."

Backstage with DJ and Randi

Just of few of the GSoW team

Its all about having fun and changing the world

As you can image, we have far more work to do than editors to do it. Please contact me at susangerbic.com if you have questions or would like to join the project.  For the last two years we have been working out of secret Facebook groups.  I'm happy to say we have outgrown Facebook.  In the next few weeks we will be moving to a custom built forum that will allow better communication between the language teams, as well as better training of new editors.  Just like the Facebook groups, the forum will be hidden away unless you have joined our team.

Thank you for your support, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Susan

Happy Halloween - The Bell Witch Page

Fresh off the plane, Ben Radford wrote to me about his visit to the Bell Witch house in Adams, Tenn.   Apparently he had visited the house while attending CSIcon in Nashville, and wondered what the Wikipedia page looked like.  He was surprised that the page did not have skeptical content, though he and Brian Dunning had written articles about the place. 

I told him I would look into it, and vowed to only devote one hour to the page rewrite. After about 3 hours I had a good working rewrite of the page.  Fascinating story and as editor Brad McDowell pointed out, a great example of Hyman's Maxim, don't try to research something until you know there is a there, there.   As you will see from the page, the ghost writers base their writings on a book that was written 70+ years after the event.  Even that book was based on a (never seen) book that was from a 30 year old man's childhood memories of the events.  So not very reliable. 

Anyway, as usual it is always fun to see how many views these pages get, so before you check this URL, make a guess how many people in October 2012 have visited the Bell Witch page.   And to prove that this is a Halloween story, you will see a major drop in visits from September. 

The Bell Witch before

The Bell Witch after

William B. Davis ~ Page Makeover

Back in late October 2011 I wrote this article about improving William B. Davis's Wikipedia page.  I wouldn't really have cared about his stub page except for the fact that he is one of our skeptical spokespeople.  I hadn't known this before until I accidentally stumbled across an interview he gave where he credited skeptic Barry Beyerstein for introducing him to the skeptical community.  (I had Beyerstein on Google Alert which is how I discovered the interview) Once I discovered this fact, I knew I had to clean up his page.

So I looked around and added all the skeptical references I could find.  Then got my friend Brian Engler to upload a really nice image of Davis leaning on the CSICON podium.  I started making changes here and there and also contacted Davis on Facebook.

He was more than helpful.  I got all kinds of links from him as well as pictures.  Tonight I'm launching his page, along with the "before".  I think you will really be amazed at the changes.

Here is a bit of knowledge I picked up along the way.

One idea I had was to make his page a DYK page as they allow brand new pages as well as expanded stubs as candidates for the front page of Wikipedia.  What I didn't realize at the time was that by making changes to the "live" page and then waiting a few weeks and adding more and then a bit more I was taking the page out of the running.  The rule is that the page needs to expand "5 fold" and have at least 850 words (not counting citations, charts and captions).

If I had not made any changes to the page when I first approached it, and then did all the work on my user page (or sandbox) and then copied/paste/saved the page live I would have expanded the page 5-fold.  Adding bit by bit to the live page erased that condition.

Coping the page and pasting it on my user page enabled me to be able to work "off-line".  I was able to make changes to the page without having to give a reason for each change.  Also when I copy/paste/saved the page back "live" it will be with a fresh history.  Only showing the one edit where it is completely done.

Tim Farley looked the page over as well as Dustin and Lei and helped with some spelling and so on.  Tim changed the page from going to a redirect page for William Davis - Premier of Ontario page to a disambiguation page for William Davis people. 

Tim also wrote a code that kept my user page from being searchable whenever anyone typed in "William B. Davis" into a search engine.  Only people with the URL could now find the page.

I also wasn't familiar with IMDB, I looked at Martin Landau's WP page and discovered how that editor made a chart for all the film credits Landau had.  I went into "edit" and copied all the text on Landau, pasted them into Davis's page and through trial and error changed everything.  It took a long long time to type all that info into Davis's page.  In the end I learned a lot about making charts.  Learn by doing!

Another problem I ran into over and over with his film credits was that some shows had WP pages, others didn't and some "linked" to WP pages, but not the correct WP page.  I know there is a short-cut bot out there on WP that will fix these problems quickly.  But I don't know how to use it.  What I did for every title, person and place was to put the name into WP's search.  I could then make the edit for the hyperlink to go to the correct page.  (blog explaining how to do this in detail). 

The reason I went to all this trouble was three-fold.  Firstly anyone who is going to credit Barry Beyerstein with anything is going to touch a soft spot in my heart.  Secondly the whole idea of the We Got your Wiki Back! project is to make sure that when people venture over to our spokespeople's pages they can see that they have well-written and cared for pages.  Thirdly William B. Davis is famous.  He receives about 4-5 thousand hits a month to his page.  That means potentially 4-5 thousand people will be reading about Beyerstein, Skepticism, CSICOP and the critical thinking quotes that I left.  A total win for skepticism!

Not all of our spokespeople are going to make such an impact, Davis we know for sure will.  Who knows who might be next?  I'm not privy to everyones schedules.  Tomorrow Ben Radford might score an amazing interview on CNN and the world will be looking at his page, will it be ready?  Does it reflect well on skepticism? Does it appear that Radford is respected in his community?  In his case, the answer is "yes".  But so many of our spokespeople are lacking great pages.

I'm not sure where I will be focusing my Wiki eye tomorrow, but if you have a suggestion or would like to help with this project and don't know where to start, please contact me.  susangerbic@yahoo.com


William B. Davis page the first time I saw it

William B. Davis page after the We Got Your Wiki Back! project

Added Dec 25, 2011
Just finished listening to Jacob Fortin's "The Good Atheist" podcast whom interviewed Davis a few days ago.  Very funny how this interview happened and its link to the page make-over.  I'm going to submit the story to the IIG's www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com site.  Take a look.

Also took the interview with Fortin and gleaned the best quotes about Dawkins and John Mack and created a citation back to the podcast.  This is how it is supposed to work folks.   Get as much information out there for the world to follow back to our skeptical content.  We need to have each other's backs as well.   http://www.thegoodatheist.net/2011/12/22/the-good-atheist-podcast-episode-154/

----------------------

This just in.  Received this message a few minutes ago on my "talk page"

"William B. Davis is fantastic, your edits made a huge difference in quality! Nicely done! You should put it up for Good Article status! Not sure if you're aware, but there are some great article checking tools here

 

Dreadstar ☥ 19:58, 25 December 2011 (UTC)" 

That was a really welcome message.  Usually I cross my fingers whenever I see that I have a new message on my talk page, and say to myself "what did I do wrong now"?

So I followed the instructions Dreadstar gave and read everything I could find about what is a "good article" and how to nominate the page.  Apparently a Good Article is something that if approved will appear at the top of the discussion page.  Only one in every 250 WP articles are considered "good articles" (I would think that would be a bigger spread, but they are counting ALL WP pages, not just the paranormal pages I keep running into)

I nominated the page, now I wait as there is quite a back-log.  An editor will be in touch to review the page and offer suggestions to improve the page.  I guess I have 7 days from that time to make the changes.  It gets reviewed again and again and if approved then it will get the special attention as a "good article" They have a page devoted to "good articles" so it will join that.  I have the page listed under "the Arts" which is Davis's main claim to fame. 

There is an even higher honor apparently, one called the "featured article" page.  This is for pages that are the Best of Wikipedia. Only one in 100 pages are featured articles.  Guess I have some new goals for 2012.  I'm a competitive sort, and want my gold star!

Every day is Spring Cleaning on Wikipedia - BE BOLD

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia isn't just leaving well-cited well-written blurbs on paranormal Wikipedia pages.  Sometimes a good Spring cleaning is needed.  Uncited material needs to go.  Often times we leave a "citation needed" tag beside the sentence.  Looks like this... 

{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Other times it is best to just be BOLD and delete the mess (cited and uncited)  

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.  

I was adding articles by Ben Radford and Brian Dunning to the Spontaneous Human Combustion page when reading through the article I noticed this cited reference... 

Two examples of people surviving static flash events^{[clarification needed]} are given in a book on SHC.^[2] Author John Heymer claims that the two subjects, Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead, speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.^[3]

• In September 1985, Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of blue light.^[4] As she claimed, "It was me. I was lighting up the driveway every couple of steps. As we got into the garden I thought it was funny at that point. I was walking around in circles saying, 'Look at this, mum, look!' She started screaming and my brother came to the door and started screaming and shouting 'Have you never heard of spontaneous human combustion?'" Her mother, Dianne Clark, responded, "I screamed at her to get her shoes off and it [the flashes] kept going so I hassled her through and got her into the bath. I thought that the bath is wired to earth. It was a blue light, you know, what they call electric blue. She thought it was fun, she was laughing."
• In winter 1980, Cheshire, England, resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen, wearing flame-resistant pajamas, when she was suddenly engulfed in a short-lived fire that seemed to have ignited the fluff on her clothing but burned out before it could set anything properly alight.^[3]

In addition, Jack Angel claims to have survived an SHC-like event.

Yep, that is true evidence of SHC right?  I deleted the whole thing and went over to the discussion page and left this note.  

I removed this section on survivors. There is no evidence that these people were experiencing spontaneous human combustion, no indication of medical evidence following up on these "stories". One girl had a "blue light" coming out of her that she thought was funny, her mother put her in the bath. The other story is about a woman wearing her PJ's in the kitchen when she caught on fire. So? The third reference is to someone mentioned but not cited. If someone would like to put these edits back in and can give a compelling reason why they should be in the article, then they are below for you to copy/paste. Sgerbic (talk) 00:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Its been a month and no one has responded to my deletion.   BTW the page received 52,171 hits November 2011. 

Can't remember how I stumbled on this one, I think I might have been searching for "Long Island Medium" and "Theresa Caputo" on Wikipedia and the page for Hicksville, New York came up in the search.  Apparently they have a small list of "notable natives/residents" which includes Billy Joel (you might get that question on a trivial pursuit card).  Someone had added Theresa Caputo from Long Island Medium on the notable list.  Because there is no page for either, the words were in red ink on the Hicksville page.  I removed the names and went to the discussion page and left this for the editor...

Having a list of notable people means they should be Notable. *Theresa Caputo of Long Island Medium neither person or show is notable. Sgerbic (talk) 20:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Today I noticed that the same person went back and added the names back in the list (thankfully I have Hicksville, NY on my watchlist).  I reverted the edit and followed the editors ISP (no user name just anonymous editor)  and found that the only edits they have done on Wikipedia are the ones here on Hicksville's page.  That's kinda strange.  Then there is one more edit, to this page.  The editor is trying to create a page called Long Island Medium with the only thing on the page this...

Long Island Medium is a television show on TLC that follows the life of Hicksville, New York's Theresa Caputo, a psychic medium.

Wow!  Going to need a lot more info before that page becomes reality.  I put it on my watchlist so I can watch the page as it grows with citations.  This person didn't just make the page, they somehow are asking administrators to make the page.  It is being reviewed and I'm sure nothing will come of it.  One admin left a really nice welcome note on that editor's user page (yes, even anonymous editors have a user page) explaining how to edit and what notable means.  NOTE: while writing this blog I noticed that another admin has already deleted the request, stating that there is insufficient context.

Here is another clean-up I did this time for Rosemary Althea's page.

I'm removing all of this until it can be cited.
Rosemary Altea is a New York Times best-selling Author and psychic medium who also runs a charitable healing organization. As well as writing books and doing private consultations with clients, Altea gives lectures and holds events talking about the subject of spirituality and healing. She is well known world wide and has a large following in England, America, Italy and Latin America in particular.
Sgerbic (talk) 01:50, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Still no response from the original editor.

Here is a rather pleasant discussion I left on the Sally Morgan (stage artist) WP page.  Someone named Hayleysme left the edit, I reverted it... Hope I don't sound too snarky.

Hayleysme: Your edit to the page was reverted. Just wanted you to understand why so that you can help us improve this page in the future. Here is what you wrote... "Sally's gift evolved organically over the years and through word of mouth she soon had a thriving psychic practice that she used to run from my home. Since becoming a professional medium she has read for thousands of people who have experienced a personal tragedy and suffered a great loss. Over the years Sally has been linked to A-list celebrities and Royalty famously reading for the likes of Uma Therman, George Michael, Natalie Imbruglia and most notably the late princess Diana."
Wikipedia "works" because everything written HAS to be cited. If you can just go from personal stories then you will find people saying that the moon is made of cheese and that they visit it often before they have friends over for a party. What you have written is firstly that she has something called a "gift" not sure what that means? Is there some kind of proof of that? Popularity is not proof. Running a "psychic practice" from your home tells us what? Is there proof of this? I'm sure we can prove that she has read a thousand people who have suffered losses, but how does that improve the article? So she has been linked to these celebrities, what does that mean? Where is the citation to prove they are "A-list". And seriously where is the proof that she is getting messages from Lady Di? Other than she says she is doing so, Wikipedia needs evidence.
Really would love to hear back from you, Its possible that you have this evidence but just don't know how to properly cite it in the article. Please paste the links here, and one of us can add the evidence into the article once we look over the link. Personal blogs or just hear-say isn't evidence by the way. We don't need more edits about moon cheese, please help us improve Sally Morgan's Wikipedia page. Would love to see some positive links showing how she is finding missing persons and solving crimes. Having that ability would really be awesome and could really make the police's jobs a lot easier. Maybe even stop crimes before they happen. Sgerbic (talk) 05:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

 This happened over a month ago and no response from anyone.   I'm just noticing that in October I left a "citation needed" for several of her books.  I think I will just remove those books as it has been a couple months and no one has gone to the trouble to cite them.  I can't stand seeing "citation needed" from several years ago.

I just removed this bit and will leave a note on the discussion page saying why I did so.  If someone wants to take the time to add them back in with the correct citations then wonderful. 

In March 2010, she appeared on an episode of ''[[What Katie Did Next]]'' in which she investigated the home of British model [[Katie Price]].{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Sally has also filmed a biopic titled "The Psychic Life of Sally Morgan" which was shown on Sky's Bio Channel.{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Sally Morgan has published two books, these were her autobiography 'My Psychic Life' published by [[Penguin]] in 2007 and 'Healing Spirits' which was published by Penguin in 2009. Her new book 'Life After Death' was released by Penguin on the 7th April 2011.{{Citation needed|date=October 2011}}

Just noticed that in her now one-sentence Career section the only reference is to a TV-show she did and the link is dead.  Someone tagged it long before.  Maybe there is a better link?  I'm not going looking for it at the moment.  It isn't a good idea to remove dead links from articles as it probably worked at one-time.  If I remove the one sentence from her Career area then the only thing on her page is 4 paragraphs of criticism.  Not even a picture of her.  Guess her fans really don't have her Wiki back, so sad. 

This is a small edit I did for a New Zealand TV show called "Sensing Murder" the lede read like this before I got to it...

Sensing Murder is a television series in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, in which alleged psychics are asked to act as psychic detectives to help solve famous unsolved murder cases in each country. The psychics have not managed to solve any of the cases so far.

I erased the last two words.  I noted that as the show is cancelled, it is unlikely that they are going to solve the cases.  

These are only a small percent of the edits that remain to be done.  Every day is Spring Cleaning day!  Please help.
   

Watchlists Again ~ Busy Busy Me

Are you checking your Watchlist? 

I sit down several times a day and try to make an edit somewhere so I can cross something off my ever-growing to-do list.  There is no end in sight of pages that need updating.  My email inbox overflows with conversations I'm having with people to improve WP pages.  (Don't let that discourage you, keep sending those emails) But I would LOVE to have some extra hands helping out.  The small group we have out there editing have more of a life than I do, and can't spend as much time as is needed.  This task is really big, but super important. 

As I was saying, are you checking your watchlist?  I mean to do a edit, then refresh the screen and notice someone has edited something onto a page incorrectly.  I guess they mean well, but usually it is from someone anonymous (just a ISP number) which tells me they aren't someone planning on sticking around long enough to get an account (Its free folks!).

Just reverted an edit for psychic Sally Morgan.  The person was quoting her personal website (incorrectly cited BTW) and spent more time talking about Gary Schwartz than Morgan.  They also tried to cite his WP page by doing this... [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Schwartz|Gary E Schwartz]] instead of by doing this... [[Gary Schwartz]].  See the difference?  Well maybe not here on this page but anyway.

In this case I went to the discussion page and explained my reasons for reverting the edit.  I welcomed the person to WP and was totally polite.  I hope, but doubt that the person will read what I left.  They probably don't know about watchlists. 

Here is another revert I did.  I had left this quote from Ben Radford on the spontaneous human combustion page.   “If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks.” 

Someone had changed the "5 billion" to "7 billion".  Ahhh no.  So I nicely responded by saying "yes, I know they are now saying that there are 7 billion people in the world, but I am QUOTING someone, and that is what he said".  (actually I responded nicer than this, due to limited space)

Don't know if this person just searched for the phrase "billion people" and changed it to "7 billion people" everywhere they found it.  Must be a lot of "reverting" going on today.

Checking my watchlist shows that there are a lot of other editors out there, reverting edits before I get to it.  Thank you people!  But we do need a lot more eyes out there.

We need to stay on this, because once the change is made, and no one notices, then it just tends to linger.  And we know we are changing these pages so that when the general public wanders over to have a look, they will find a well written WP page explaining it, and hopefully they will find some critical thinking link left behind as well. 

Today I re-listened to myself talk on the Rational Alchemy podcast (this was before I joined their cast) and I got the question from Brian Walsh "do you spend a lot of time reverting edits from paranormal people?"  My answer was, "no, I spend most of my time reverting edits from skeptics".  I don't think  he expected that answer at all.  

JREF President issues challenge to psychics

If I might paraphrase Wikipedia editor Dustin Phillips who says he got into editing Wikipedia because he kept putting up great links on his Facebook page to share with his skeptic friends, after awhile it seemed to make more sense to put those same links up on Wikipedia so everyone could see them.  Exactly.

Posting links for your friends is a good idea.  A better idea is to get the links in a place that the world can enjoy.  A place that holds an encyclopedic hold on our hearts and knowledge.  Maybe a place like Wikipedia?

Found this link left on Mark Edward's Facebook page today and I knew exactly who needed to be reading it.  Yep you know where. 

So I read through all the links on the page (thank you DJ for including so many).  I went through every single link and made a nice paragraph that could be inserted on the pages of Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, Carla Baron, John Edward and Alison DuBois.  I just changed a few words here and there to make it fit nicely into their pages.

On Van Praagh's page I went a bit farther.  Because of the links that DJ left in the Huffington Post I was able to add two awesome YouTube videos to his page.  I didn't label them as "failures" like the videos state, but just mentioned one as "Van Praagh often appears in the media to promote his group readings, seminars and workshops. One such appearance on the TV show "The Circle" shows Van Praagh giving a 5 minute reading to several audience members". The 5 minute reading is pretty horrible to watch BTW.  I didn't put these two sentences under criticism/skepticism but under the category of "Career as a Medium", mainly because I don't want to give my opinion that it is a failure of a reading, I'm just letting the viewer decide.  I'm sure true believers will think he did rather well (he did seem to get a few hits) and they might say that they know he is for real because sometimes he has a bad day. 

In another link I wrote a completely separate paragraph about a medical statement he made about Barbara Walters.  He told her that she had elevated white blood cells, she went to the doctor and found out that her blood was normal.  She states on the video that what he told her is harmful.  So I left that video for his fans as well.

I'm sure that the JREF's exposure on TIME.com, ABC, Nightline, AOL, Huffington Post and on and on will get more readers than my few paragraphs on the psychics pages on Wikipedia.  But they work together, people go specifically to Wikipedia to learn about these people, and will look at the references left.

What kind of numbers are we talking about anyway?  Lets look at only Sept 2011 and see what kinds of hits we can expect Oct 2011 will get.

James Van Praagh - 4,156
Carla Baron - 718
John Edward - 16,244
Sylvia Browne - 14,003
Alison DuBois - 263

So about 35K people are looking at these pages each month.  That's quite a lot when you think it just took me about an hour to update these pages.  Almost a half a million will view these citations in a years time.  Also leaving these citations exposes readers to our skeptical spokespeople, publications and organizations, that is a win for Guerrilla Skepticism!  

So keep this in mind the next time you paste a link to your Facebook page or Twitter feed.  That's nice and keeping your friends informed is a good thing.  But if you aren't willing to take an hour once in awhile to edit that link into Wikipedia, then maybe you should bring it to the attention of someone who will.

Seriously think about this next statement of mine.  Are you a skeptic, part of the skeptical community?  Fine, hang out, share links, socialize and bitch about stuff.   Or are you a part of the skeptical movement?  If so, what are you doing? If you are in the movement then you need to start doing so. 

Conversations

Love Skype!  Just had my first Wikipedia centered Skype conversation with Dustin and Lei.  They were good sports being from Kentucky and Arkansas and I'm in California, a really late call for them.  John was unable to make the call due to illness but he gave us several questions to discuss, so he was with us in spirit.  I want to share some of the conversation with you. 

We talked about why we edit, and some of our projects.  Dustin said he feels like "a part of a team" and thinks that having a conversation once a month or so will keep him motivated to edit.  Lei started out editing Wikipedia after hearing Tim Farley talk about why it is so important. Tim had asked for help on researching obscure topics which Lei found interesting, eventually she felt she could start helping more by actually editing.

We discussed why more people in the skeptical movement don't edit, even though we keep hearing that this is a great project?  I think we decided that most people don't know where to begin, the project is really big and daunting.  Dustin said that some of his skeptic friends have given up editing Wikipedia because there is so much to do and it is never ending, which is what attracts Dustin.  

Both Dustin and Lei are involved in skeptic meetups, but felt that this project satisfied their love of research.  Dustin felt that he was already posting science links to Facebook, taking those same links and putting them into Wikipedia would reach a much larger audience than just his Facebook friends.

Having others to talk to was what was most important on this call, we discussed how we never get feedback from what we leave in these articles.  No one is going to write to us and say "thanks for that critical thinking link you left, really changed my mind" anymore than someone would write to a dictionary or a print encyclopedia.  But still this is how minds are changed, by allowing them to do their own research. 

Lei is all over the "We Got Your Wiki Back" project and reverts vandalism several times a week for our skeptical spokespeople's pages.  She just reverted one for George Hrab a couple days ago by viewing her watchlist.  When I noticed her revert and mentioned it to her, she wrote back "I've got his Wiki back!"  Too funny. 

She is also trying to clean-up the page for J. T. Eberhard who will be speaking at Skepticon in a few weeks.  She knows that his page will be getting a lot of hits when it gets close to the date.  She has emailed him asking for some info but he has not responded.  Very frustrating. 

While looking at these pages we noticed that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has his own page.  I had no idea.  Check out that page, really well cited.  Someone took some real care creating this page.  When you go there you might want to know that this is accessed over 100K times a month.  Amazing!  In fact in July it hit 291,747.   July 2011 "this article ranked 3,622 in traffic on en.wikipedia.org".   You can see this here. 

Dustin and I both shared how awesome it feels when you leave a really good blurb, correctly cited in a place where their is little critical thinking.  He had been looking for a way to reference some of Ben Radford's work, and came across an article Radford had published on spontaneous human combustion.  I'm really proud that Dustin is helping out with this project, he really understands what I'm advocating.  Here is his reference, look under possible causes.  Awesome right?

As I said, John could not make our call.  But we talked about how we might help him on his Wikipedia project.  John is a professor in Washington and teaches a freshman class on critical thinking.   John is working as a Wikipedia Ambassador which tries to teach college students how to edit Wikipedia.  John has them pick skeptical topics like UFO's, mediums, lake monsters ect to either clean up the existing page or start a new page.  He has made all the students make user pages with a very short bio.  Dustin, Lei and I divided up the students and will contact them on their talk pages, welcoming them to Wikipedia editing and letting them know we will help them if they need it.  There are several I'm really interested in, one is writing on ectoplasm.  How can you not love this project!  Ectoplasm as a homework assignment?!?

The Ambassador project is sponsored by Wikipedia, it trains and supports the educators.  John said he got to spend a weekend at one of the nearby colleges with food and training.  He loved it and highly encourages others to volunteer. 

Soooo I'm always open to other editors (or wannabe editors) to write to me here or by email at susangerbic@yahoo.com.  I'm willing to help you in anyway I can.  I would also love to have more of these Skype Wikipedia conversations if others are interested.  We can set it up by time zone to be more effective.  Just let me know if interested. 

Welcome New Wikipedia Editor Dustin Phillips!

Mark Edward and I were recently on the Rational Alchemy podcast discussing Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia and elsewhere.  The podcast released on Sept 15, 2011 which caused a jump in my stats for this blog on that day. 

I received a really interesting email from Dustin Phillips who lives in Louisville, Kentucky.  I'm going to share some of the conversations I've had with Dustin (yes I have his permission to do so) because I think that the questions he asks and the things he learns are all relevant to others reading this blog and wanting to edit.  Also Dustin is really articulate and organized, both traits that make for excellent Wikipedia editors.  I'm really excited that Dustin is on board with this project. 

==============================

"I heard the Rational Alchemy podcast today that you and Mark Edward were interviewed on, and I found it very inspiring. I like the idea of a "skeptic army," and I'm eager to join. My research and writing skills are fairly good (I do marketing research for a living,) and I would like to put them to use in the work you're doing on Wikipedia. I'm looking for something I could devote two or three hours per week to do--maybe more eventually. Would you say a good place for me to start is by picking a few topics I'm interested in, and tracking their respective pages on Wikipedia (monitoring for changes and editing as needed?) Or is there some other way I can put my skills and time to better use in helping the cause? I imagine you might be receiving a number of e-mails like this, in light of the Rational Alchemy interview, so if you can't respond right away, I'll certainly understand. And if you are unable to respond directly to me, that is ok. I'm following your Guerrilla Skepticism blog now, and look forward to reading about more of your ideas for the skeptic cause."

Thanks,

Dustin Phillips

==============================

...The first thing to do is to gauge your level of ability.  You probably already are comfortable using the computer, do you already have a Wikipedia account?  That is the first thing to do, make sure it is active.

Second thing is probably to start reading through my blog.  I know it is long, but have a ton of stuff in there, easy to advanced.  All kinds of ideas of things to do as well as not to do.  I want you to be happy with the area you pick.  I have a few people working on pages that they feel passionate about and are really getting into it, sites I have never heard of.

Something that really surprised me is that many people who are really comfortable using the computer and doing software things really aren't comfortable editing Wiki.  There are a lot of rules and it can be intimidating.  I am more than willing to walk you through whatever means needed to help you.  I am very friendly and approachable.  Yes, I am busy but this project is really important and I don't have a problem with even the little instructions.  So if you get lost on something just let me know.

If you have some real interest in a specific area, or maybe a specific talent then maybe I can steer you towards a specific blog or two?"

==============================

I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I recently joined the Louisville Area Skeptics, but I've been following the skeptic movement for many years.

In response your questions: I'm very comfortable with computers. I do Internet-based research on a daily basis as part of my job, so scouring the net for information is something I'm quite good at. I have some, limited experience with html.

I actually just opened a Wikipedia account today. I've anonymously edited a few pages on there in the past, so I at least know the basics.

As far as specific areas of interest, I'm particularly interested in keeping tabs on alternative medicine--especially herbs, homeopathic remedies and vitamin supplements (ie anything sold in stores.)

I will definitely start reading through your blog. I'm excited to read more about your ideas for cooperative skeptic work! 

==============================

...Alt med.  Good choice.  I admire someone wants to work on that area, VERY important but not my area of interest.  On my blog there is a list of "keywords" and you should maybe search for homeopathy as I have done a little work on the Normal pages of Walmart and CVS Pharmacy. 

Also with Power Balance bracelets, check that out. 

You have opened an account as a real person.  Excellent.  Now you need to make sure you follow all of the rules and we can get you started.  I'm on skype and if you need help doing edits just let me know and we can screen share so I can watch you or you can watch me edit. 

If you have a page you really want to work on, let me know in advance and I will suggest how to go about that.  The changes you should make for awhile should be small, learning ones so that you can make bigger changes later. 

Again there is so much you can do, and you can do them at your leisure.  Just stay organized so you don't spend a lot of time remembering where you were, or where the document you were using to edit. 

Dustin it is so difficult for me to tell you what to do, please read through as much of my blog as you can.  Ask me questions, I'll get back to you as quickly as I can.  Please avoid the main homeopathy page as well as the other really popular pages.  Those pages are patrolled by experienced editors and you shouldn't try changing anything unless you really know what you are doing.  Some editors aren't really excited about new editors messing with something that it has taken them months to get agreement with.  Read the discussion areas first. 

I don't want to scare you away from editing, as it is really important and a blast to do.  But start out simple, gain confidence.  If you don't see something obvious you want to start with, then try working backwards.  One of my early blogs I talk a lot about this.  Find an article in a reputable journal or newspaper ect that would make a great cite.  Read the article several times looking for a way to make two or three good sentences that kinda sum up the point of the article.  Then go to the site you want to leave it, then decide if it is something that should be there and where on the page.  Blaa Blaa Blaa ect...(I describe on the Pet Psychic blogs how to edit in detail)

Anyway, if you write comments on the blog I get an email directly.  I love that because the comments (and how I answer them) are where the best conversations happen, plus other people learn from the discussion. 

===================================

 From Dustin-

"Awesome! Thanks so much for your help. I'll catch up with your blog this weekend, and stick my toe in the wiki editing waters. I'll also browse through Wikipedia and see what specific topics I might be interested in. Power Balance bracelets are definitely of interest to me. Avoiding main topics is great advice--I hadn't thought about that. I also had never payed much attention to the discussion areas on Wikipedia. I'll catch up with your blog, and familiarize myself with Wikipedia better, and let you know when I need help with the next step.

Thanks again! I think this is really important work, and I'm so happy to be able to help out."

===================================

"Hi Susan! I just made my first major Wikipedia edit. I watched the film Contagion this weekend, and was pleased with its depiction of science, so I added a section to its wikipedia entry called "Scientific accuracy." Other wiki editors had been expressing interest in adding it, but they hadn't done anything in the past week, so I went ahead and added it. I added some references to a medscape article written by Paul Offit and a slate article by Carl Zimmer, so I got some skeptic folks in there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(film)#Scientific_accuracy

"Hopefully you'll be able to see the edit I made before anyone takes it down. I hope I did everything right. I've never done a wikipedia edit beyond grammar corrections before this, so let me know if I messed up anything. :-)"

====================================

From Dustin-

" I read through your blog. It was very helpful! There are parts of Wikipedia (like the discussion page and view history) that I never knew existed. I have added "power balance" to my watch list as well as the dowsing wand "GT200" and homeopathic company "Boiron." I'm creating some Google alerts to help me keep up to date on all these issues. I really like the idea of "working backward" that you mentioned on your blog. In some ways, that's how my edit of the Contagion page came about. I was pleased with the film's depiction of science and googled for articles regarding that. I found Paul Offit's review of the film, and realized that a mention of pro-vaccine crusader Paul Offit on the Contagion wiki-page would be fantastic. And now I can track the Offit page views and see if there's an increase in hits. Ben Radford wrote a review of the film on CFI's site, but unfortunately, I'm having troubles finding a line in it that would be suitable to quote in the "Scientific Accuracy" section I created. http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/contagion_film_review--_now_with_20_more_anti-vaxx_conspiracy/

Over time I will expand the number of topics I track. Let me know if there are any specific topics where my help is especially needed. And, of course, I'll continue to follow your blog. :-)"

====================================

Dustin.  Your edit and conversation on the discussion area is all picture perfect!  I can't see anything that might need to be changed.  Only thing I noticed and didn't check were if there were Wikipedia hyperlinks to Homeopathy and to some of the names where you left.  Maybe they were but just somewhere else I didn't read?  I would really like the homeopathy one hyperlinked (I read it in the plot summary) as it would bring people to that nasty bit of pseudoscience. 

I read the article by Ben Radford and agree, there isn't anything you can put in the article from him, sad as I would love to see even more skeptics quoted and linked.  You did wonderful with what you found. 

I read through the discussion area and you responded exactly as you should, and I love that they even responded with "It's great! Thanks for adding. Erik (talk | contribs) 16:28, 18 September 2011 (UTC)"

====================================

Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help and the jump-start your interview on Rational Alchemy gave me!

I put Wikipedia hyperlinks on the names (Paul Offit, Carl Zimmer, etc) but I hadn't thought to check the Plot section for potential work. Hyperlinking "homeopathy" is a great idea! I hadn't thought of that. I'll perform that edit right now.

Yeah, a quote from Ben Radford and link to CFI would have been perfect, but, oddly, his review doesn't really mention the science of the movie. However, I will continue to monitor the skeptic-sphere for any articles that I could use. It seems like the kind of thing that skeptic doctors like Steven Novella and Harriet Hall might write about in the coming weeks. I follow their writing closely, so if they say anything, I'll definitely catch it.

On a side note, I definitely recommend the film to skeptics. It's rare to find a film that gets the science so right. And the villain of the film is a alt med, conspiracy theorist who makes money promoting a homeopathic remedy. He's sorta' an amalgam of Mike Adams (aka "the Health Ranger"), Andrew Wakefield, and so forth. And the film even makes it clear that he's a fraud. It's satisfying to see some skepticism in major Hollywood film.

Next on my plate is to collect some info I can use on power balance, GT200 and Boiron. I know that Boiron is currently involved in a controversial lawsuit: they are suing an Italian blogger who dared to speak out against homeopathy. I'm usually pretty busy during the week, so I might not be able to do too many edits over the week, but I'd like to get into a rhythm of collecting data over the week, then aim to perform a couple major edits on the weekend, then gradually increase my work over time. I'm not exactly sure how the rhythm will work yet...I imagine I'll figure out what works best for my schedule as I do this more and more. Today was like me "testing the water," and I definitely like it and can't wait to do more! I'll definitely keep you updated on my progress.

We Got Your Wiki Back! ~ Page Makeovers!

I'd like to take a minute to thank everyone that is working on the edits for this project.  I'll update this page as I find more.  But wanted you to check out the before and after. 

You can always find the before of a page by clicking on the "view history" tab on the upper right side of the Wiki page you are viewing. Click on the "Date written in Blue".

I'm linking to the page as I originally saw it.  The after page may change from the time I'm posting this to the time you get a chance to view it.

Brian Dunning (skeptic)  BEFORE
Brian Dunning (author)  NOW

Sean Faircloth BEFORE
Sean Faircloth   NOW

MonsterTalk BEFORE (the before is what was written in 12 hours and launched when Karen Stollznow's page made the Did You Know? front page of Wikipedia on Saturday July 23, 2011. 
MonsterTalk  NOW

Jennifer McCreigh  BEFORE  (this was what the page looked like on July 24, 2011)
Jennifer McCreigh   NOW

Ben Radford  BEFORE
Ben Radford   NOW

Looking for a page that needs improvement?  Check out some of these Category Pages.  Close your eyes and click on a name, and that is your "date" for the next hour or so.  Do what you can to clean up as best you can.  Remember that these Category Pages are lacking entries.  Follow the directions from this blog to add more people to the page so everyone can play along.

[[Category: American skeptics]]
[[Category: Australian sceptics]]
[[Category: New Zealand sceptics]]
[[Category: Brazilian skeptics]]
[[Category: Indian skeptics]]
[[Category: Finnish sceptics]]
[[Category: British sceptics]]
[[Category: English skeptics]]
[[Category: Canadian skeptics]]

Psychic Detectives

As more and more people get turned onto the idea of editing Wikipedia for skeptical content they ask me "what should I do?"

My advise is always the same.  Open a Wikipedia account (Wiki Commons if you are going to upload pictures) and read my entire blog.  Then pick something that interests you and get started.  Ask for feedback if you feel you need it.  Then comment here on the blog letting us know what your working on. 

Ben Radford and I are on the same mindset of a page that badly needs help.  Psychic Detectives (in my opinion the lowest of the woo people).  I remember reading an article in SI ages ago about the best evidence for a actual "solved" case using psychics.  I didn't know (at that time) any of the parties concerned, but some time has passed and I'm familiar with all the players now.  The investigator of that article was Ben. 

At TAM9 at the CFI table they were giving away free copies of SI, one issue was this one from March/April 2010.  I snagged it and kept trying to read it at the IIG table when I wasn't talking to people.  I never got more than a couple sentences into the article when I had to put it back down.  To make a long story short (too late) I did not come home with that issue, nor can I find the one I had at home and it isn't on-line.

So I'm asking for help.  I can't update this site without having access to articles.  That issue was totally awesome with references to Sylvia Browne and the "best case for psychic detectives" in it.

When you look at the psychic detective page you will see how pathetic it actually is.  Badly sourced for something that we could easily fix.  It does not generate a lot of hits (only 493 in June 2011) but we don't know who these people are, they might be total believers or maybe fence sitters accessing this page.  It does not matter, this page is in the public's eye and needs attention.

Besides, once the blurbs are written for this page, we can take the citations and blurbs and leave them on all the mentioned psychic pages.  Sylvia Browne included.  Spread the knowledge.

Please help.